If At First
by concretya
Summary: ...you don't succeed, try, try again. Sirius Black is a companionable creature, and he's been trying all his life to find love.


* * *

Author's note: My first really Sirius-centric fanfic; it's an attempt to reconcile my inability to imagine him ending up with anyone, really, and my acknowledgement that he probably had a number of short-term partners over the years. Some of the pairings are unrequited, some almost happen, some happen and then end, but I'm not going to list them here. Again, some slash, some alcohol, nothing graphic.

* * *

1. Age 11

Sirius was excited about starting at Hogwarts. He couldn't wait to get on the Hogwarts Express tomorrow, to be Sorted at the feast, to unpack in his new Common Room and meet his new classmates. But at this rate, it seemed like he would never make it that far. The traditional Black family dinner had been dragging on for hours; Sirius and Regulus and Narcissa and Andromeda and Bellatrix, straight-backed and garbed in their fanciest suits and dresses, sat with their parents along a long, stately table. The gourmet food, prepared carefully by the House Elves, was long gone, and the elder generation was droning on politely about Headmaster Dumbledore's scandalously lenient policies towards Mudbloods.

Sirius risked slumping a little bit in his seat, and he stretched out his legs. His foot connected with that of Narcissa, sitting opposite him. She kicked him, and Sirius noted with admiration that the portion of her visible above the table was completely unchanged; she looked, as usual, calm, collected, and beautiful. He wiggled his eyebrows at her. She wrinkled her nose at him, and looked away.

He smirked. She was the closest to him in age of those relatives already at Hogwarts, and the family had practically ordered her to take Sirius under her wing. (Of course, Sirius thought smugly, she would have anyway. She may pretend she was too grown-up for him, but he knew she really did like him. How could she not?) As an added bonus, Cissy was gorgeous. Sirius knew she was, and he knew that all the boys in her grade knew that she was. She was probably old enough that some of them wanted to have sex with her. (Haha, sex.) And when he got on the Hogwarts Express with her, side-by-side, (he was even taller than she was, already,) everyone would know that he was close to her. It would be awesome. He grinned and edged his foot up against hers again.

Narcissa had not, in fact, been the one to take Sirius onto the train. As soon as the Black family emerged on Platform 9 ¾, she had been whisked off by a group of girls almost as beautiful, and just as aloof. Andromeda had been the one to grab Sirius by the elbow— slightly embarrassing for an 11-year-old boy, but nobody noticed in the crowd— and lead him over towards the scarlet train. He liked Andromeda, even if she _was _a Ravenclaw, and under normal circumstances was pleased to spend time with her. But every time he had imagined his triumphant boarding of the Hogwarts Express, Cissy was by his side. And he had something important he needed to tell her, something he had heard after her branch of the family flooed away the night before.

"Thanks, Andy," he told her, using the name by which only he and Regulus called her. "I need to find Narcissa, do you know what compartment she's in?" Andromeda would probably go and sit with her Ravenclaw friends, while Narcissa and Bellatrix sat with their various Slytherin classmates.

"Probably near the back," his cousin responded. "Want me to help you find her before I go?"

"No thanks," he said gallantly. "I can do it myself."

"Okay," she said, smiled at him, and ruffled his hair. (Okay, she could be annoying sometimes.) "If you need anything, you can come find me. Good luck at the sorting!"

Having said goodbye to Andromeda, Sirius surveyed his surroundings. Most of the older students had found their friends, and he could already hear babbling, explosions, and quite a bit of yelling. He grinned happily. This was his kind of place! Other students who looked his age were still wandering in the hallway, peering cautiously through doors and shyly moving on when compartments were full. Well, he wouldn't have that problem, he had a friend already.

He found Narcissa in a large compartment near the end, two of her female friends lounging on the seats opposite her. He dropped his trunk, Shrunk for him by Andromeda, inside the door, and slid into the seat next to her. She smiled at him, genuinely pleased to see him, and he glowed.

"You made it here without getting lost," Narcissa said dryly.

"Of course," he scoffed. "But I need to talk to you about something."

"Okay."

He glanced at her friends. They were reading magazines, completely uninterested in him. Well, screw them. Narcissa liked him, and she was more popular than they were. "It's a family thing."

She sighed. "Here, do you two want to get some candy? I'll pay you back; I don't want to wait until that pimply witch makes it all the way down here."

Her brunette friend rolled her eyes, and the two got up languidly and made for the door. "Ice Mice and Licorice Wands, right?"

"Yeah, sure. Bye." Narcissa said. "What is it, Sirius?"

He scooted closer to her on the slippery seats, gazing at her in what he thought was a conspiratorial way. Her blonde hair, which made her stand out from the rest of the Blacks. Her face, smooth and pale, not pink like Andromeda's. Merlin, she was the prettiest girl he knew. He smirked, picturing the Black family tree, with its criss-crossed marriage lines.

"Cissy," he said, "last night Regulus told me that he overheard our parents. They can't think of anyone else suitable, they think we might end up marrying each other."

* * *

2. Age 13

Sirius was, for the first time in quite a while, alone. Oh, there were plenty of other students in the Gryffindor common room, but most were working, and none were his friends. It was the full moon, and Remus had gone down to the Shack an hour ago, just in case; Sirius couldn't wait until they mastered the Animagus transformation and could keep him company! James and Peter, meanwhile, were serving detention for hexing a group of Slytherin first-years. Sirius had already done his homework—not because he worked ahead like Remus, of course, but it usually didn't take him very long—so for lack of anything better to do, he decided to go practice on the Quidditch Pitch.

As he walked across the rounds in the darkening dusk, his cherished, powerful broomstick in his hand, he spotted a familiar sight in front of him. He was very used to this view of the back of her head, because he sat behind Lily Evans in Transfiguration, and amused himself by transfiguring paper into beetles to release in that bright red hair. The best parts were when she turned around and glared at him—Sirius was convinced he always saw a hint of a smile.

"Hey, Evans!" he said, bolstered by this pleasing image. "Wait up!" As she turned to see who called her name, he ran a few paces to catch up.

"Black," Lily responded, but she didn't turn away or hurry her pace. Her own friends were nowhere in sight.

"_Sirius_," he said.

She rolled her eyes. "Only if I'm Lily. You going to meet Potter and the others at the pitch, or something?" she asked, eying his broom.

"Nope," he said. "James and Peter are in detention, and Remus is—"

"Oh yeah," she interrupted. "He's going to see his sick grandmother, right? He's always so worried about her…" she trailed off.

"Yeah," Sirius said, then fell silent. He couldn't talk more about Remus without the risk of accidentally giving something away—Lily _was _a very bright witch—and he almost never got the chance to talk to Lily one-on-one. His skills were rusty. So instead of saying anything, he kept walking beside her.

"So why aren't you in detention with the others?" Lily finally asked. Sirius couldn't tell if she was being accusatory or just curious. There definitely, however, was censure in her voice when she continued, "It's for the jinxes on those poor first-years, right?"

"Yeah," Sirius said. "I wasn't with them, that's why."

"Why not?"

She was either very interested in him, Sirius decided, or very determined to distrust him. He hoped it was the former. "Because," he said. And he meant to leave it at that, but he looked at her, and wow, she was pretty. Well, she was always pretty, but she was even prettier when she wasn't glaring at him and there were no disgusting insects in her hair. He mumbled something.

"What?"

"I didn't really want to make my brother's first year miserable," he said, quietly. _That can wait until his second year_.

"Oh," Lily said. By that point, they had reached the pitch. Sirius wondered if she had intended to go there all along, or had only come along with him.

"You gonna fly, too?" he asked.

"Oh, I—no—I don't have a broom, and anyway I haven't tried since that lesson first year." She hesitated. "That didn't go so well. I did like it, though."

"You can ride with me," Sirius offered. "I've gone double before."

Lily's face lit up, and for the first time today, she actually smiled at him. Sirius suddenly remembered very clearly the last time she had smiled at him—Snape had taken the dried shrivellfigs that Lily and Peter had been using, so Sirius had wordlessly slid his and Remus' own figs across the table to them. "Oh, could I?" she said eagerly.

Sirius let the broom hover in the air, then mounted close to the front. "Hop on," he said, and grinned at Lily, "and hold on."

He rose carefully at first, then picked up speed as they went high into the air, above the spectator's benches, as high as a real Quidditch game. "Look at the full moon," he said; it was large and beautiful from here. He lifted a hand to point at it, and felt Lily strengthen her hold on him. Experimentally, he let the broom stall and drop a few feet.

"Don't do that, you oaf," Lily said, and hit him gently on the shoulder. And he could have sworn she moved a little closer, pressed a little tighter up against his back.

* * *

3. Age 16

Somewhere above him, the Slytherin Quidditch team was practicing, and under normal circumstances, he'd be standing with James and hurling secretive hexes. This time, though, his companion wasn't James, and he was quite involved in something far removed from jinxes.

He was involved with a girl. His hands were nestled comfortably in the small of her back, her breasts pressed against his chest, and he was kissing her quite passionately. Occasionally she would pull away, but within milliseconds return her lips to his: he was, after all, irresistible.

"Mmmmmm," Alice finally said. "The Quidditch game is rather distracting, don't you think?"

"No," Sirius said, or rather, mumbled into her neck. "Not when you're here instead."

"Well, come on anyway," she insisted. "A little change of scenery? Please?"

"Where would you suggest?"

"What about the greenhouses?"

Sirius rolled his eyes affectionately. "You and your plants. I'm starting to think maybe you like them more than you like me."

"I like you _both,_" Alice responded, and kissed his nose,"preferably at the same time. Come on, then." She twined her fingers in his and resolutely set off from underneath the bleachers. He followed, left without any other option. And as much as he pretended otherwise—and despite his Herbology grade—plants weren't all that bad, really. They never made him sneeze, they made his girlfriend happy, and, frankly, some were wicked cool.

It was for this reason that he convinced her that they should sneak into Greenhouse Two, instead of simply One. (He tried for Three first, of course, but she had simply asked him if he wanted a Chinese Chomping Cabbage chomping at _certain parts of him _and interrupting their tryst). He was rewarded with an array of interesting-looking and yet not dangerous plants near the very entrance.

Alice, however, would not settle. "Come on," she insisted. "Further in. Or do you want to be found right away?"

As always, he had to bow to her logic. He grinned wickedly at her back—her rather fine, curvy back—as she walked in front of him, though, and as they passed a ferny-looking plant that looked relatively harmless, he reached out and snatched a furry branch off. Then he gently, gently, very gently poked the back of her bare neck with it.

She put her hand up, and he whisked it away. By the time she turned to look at him, wary of his shenanigans after all these years, he had tucked it out of sight.

Instead of trying to look innocent, which rarely worked with her, he opted to distract her. "Are we there yet?"

"Not quite," she said, and a mischievous—and, he liked to imagine, seductive—smile lit her round face. Then she turned around and kept leading them though the thick foliage, and he resumed his attack.

This time, she didn't turn around after swatting at her neck, so she must have assumed it was simply from the leaves she brushed as she passed. So Sirius became more daring. Her neck, then the tips of her ears, all left enticingly bare by her customary bun; then the backs of her knees, one after another; and finally he inched the furry leaf up the back of the skirt she often wore on weekends.

Finally, she whirled around again to face him. "Sirius Orion Black," she said, trying to look fierce.

"Yes?" he asked, trying to look innocent, and doing about as miserable a job as she was.

She tried to scowl at him for a few seconds longer, and he began to look wildly around. There—a flower, a beautiful red and purple flower, just where he could reach it and—

"Don't!" Alice said, seeing where his hand was headed.

He froze.

"That's venomous, silly," she said, and in that moment lost all her façade of annoyance.

He grinned and reached for her waist instead, to pull her towards him and resume their favorite pastime.

* * *

4. Age 17

"Mmmmottt."

"What?" Sirius asked his best mate, confused.

"I'm hot," James said, rubbing his forehead and his already-mussed hair, and taking his glasses off to lay them on his nightstand.

"Firewhiskey does that to you, Prongs," Sirius replied, not without a fair amount of slurring himself. Sirius was never one to pass on a drink—especially firewhiskey, his favorite—and when James had come mournfully into their bedroom bearing a bottle and a tale of yet another rejection by Lily Evans, Sirius had decided to treat his friend's pain as if it was his own. And his firewhiskey. That was what friends were for, after all.

Listening to James gripe about Lily had gotten much more pleasurable since they had discovered the pleasures of liquor and the passage to Hogsmeade in fourth year. But even without the alcohol, Sirius always sat dutifully by and listened to James' lamentations. He knew all his cues by heart: when to growl, when to sigh, when to congratulate James, when to commiserate with him and when to try and cheer him up with bawdy jokes. In many ways, Sirius knew James' romantic life better than James did himself—or better than Sirius understood his own, for that matter.

Tonight was one of the nights where Sirius was most helpful as a drinking buddy, a buffer, and a head-holder when James threw up.

Right now, his charge was walking around the circular bedroom anxiously. "I'm hot, I'm hot, I'm hot," he said, then laughed bitterly. "I'm hot and she still won't go out with me. I'm hot."

At this point, Sirius couldn't quite tell if he was referring to his physical temperature or his attractiveness. He supposed it didn't really matter, because to be honest, both were impressive.

"Take your clothes off and lie down then, mate," Sirius said peacefully. He himself was lying on his bed, sprawled out, shirtless, scrunching his neck uncomfortably to watch his friend but altogether rather mellow. Alcohol never seemed to much affect his disposition, just intensify whatever mood he was already in.

"Good idea," James said, and stuggled to pull his t-shirt over his head. He then attempted to unfasten his trousers without pausing in his pacing, and he landed right on Sirius' bed and abdomen with his waistband around his ankles. "Shit," he said, and roll-heaved himself the rest of the way onto the bed. Then he closed his eyes and leaned his head back on Sirius' pillow.

Sirius studied him for a moment; first out of the corner of one eye, then finally, unknowingly, adjusting himself to see properly. James looked as he always did: lean body, much skinnier than Sirius' own; wild hair; eyes that seemed smaller when not framed by his glasses. He was in a complete disarray, shirtless, trousers still around his ankles, a wild flush in his face that almost exactly matched the sunburn on his shoulders. And, Sirius noted with amusement, the boxers that he had gotten James for his last birthday party— two vibrating Bludgers and a beater's bat, perfectly positioned on the front.

"What the hell is wrong with me, Padfoot?" James asked suddenly, without opening his eyes.

"Nothing," Sirius responded instantly. "What happened?"

"She stood me up," James said. "For a butterbeer. At Hogsmeade."

_Of course she would_, an uncharitably bitter thought, only partially born from a grudge Sirius had thought long buried, sprang into Sirius' head. _Perfect Lily is too good for alcohol. _She _would never drink herself silly with firewhiskey for you_.

"So that explains where you got the firewhiskey, then," Sirius said. "I'd wondered. It wasn't in your secret stash the last time I went through it."

This drew a grin out of James, and induced him to open his eyes. He smacked Sirius on the shoulder, hard. "Prat. I told you not to."

"Yeah, well, you said the same thing about shagging your mother, and that really didn't do anything, did it?"

This time James didn't deign to give a verbal response, and simply shoved harder.

"Ouch," Sirius said. "Didn't she ever teach you not to shove a man in his own bed? Or do I have to kick you out and watch you crawl along the floor to your own?"

"You couldn't," James said, and propped himself up on one elbow. "You couldn't."

Sirius was always one to rise to a challenge, especially when he was more than a little tipsy himself. So he rolled over, towards James, and James shouldered him right back. "Ow," Sirius complained where their bare skin, both of them heated by the firewhiskey, met. "Watch it, we'll burn a hole in my sheets." But James didn't stop shoving, and Sirius found that he didn't either, except were they really shoving any more? and then they wre fighting with their legs as well and the points of contact were increasing and the heat, it felt like fire and the whiskey was running through his veins and James' hot breath was on his face and—

* * *

5. Age 20

Sirius stood outside a familiar flat, soaking wet. His hair was dripping, his clothes were dripping, his shoes squeaked and squelched with every step. His lower half was splattered with mud from a car that had driven too fast past him in the puddly roads of London. But it was worth it.

Or would be worth it, at least, if Remus _ever opened his door_. True, Sirius was not getting wetter, as his friend's door was protected by a very slight overhang, but the rain already on him and under his skin was growing steadily colder, and at this rate, he thought, he might soon turn into a popsicle and Voldemort wouldn't have to worry about a thing.

"Remus!" he finally yelled at the unyielding door, although he knew that Remus' neighbors were prickly at the best of times and probably in as foul a mood as he. And he was rewarded by an answering voice, faint, on the other side, the welcome click of the latch being undone, and the sudden flooding of light and warmth.

"Merlin," Remus said, looking his friend over. "Why didn't you just apparate?"

Sirius scowled. Remus's mothering was sometimes a little much for him to take, but he could go for a little of it right now, and Remus seemed not in the mood to give. So he raised his eyebrows at Remus and pushed past him into the house, shaking water all over the place like the dog he spent a good portion of his time as.

"Oh," Remus said. "Right." Auror training, and years of practice from Quidditch training; Sirius had a strict rule about walking whenever he had an option, to keep in better shape. James had no such system in place, but then, the boy was naturally a stick. "And stop getting me wet. Want some tea?"

Ahh, Sirius thought, _there _it was. The offer of tea. What he had been waiting for. "Is Gryffindor the greatest?" he retorted, and jumped over the back of Remus' couch to sprawl on it. He cast a satisfied gaze around the familiar room—the worn blue rug, the Gryffindor flag on the wall, the cuckoo clock that Remus' father had given him, the beer bottles that he suspected he had left here last time….he inadvertently closed his eyes, and was just beginning to drift off in the warmth and familiar smells when…

"Fatarse," Remus said, coming back into the room with a chipped old mug of tea and plunking it down on the table next to Sirius. "Budge up and give me some room."

Sirius half-obliged; he lifted his torso, pretending as if he was sitting entirely upright, long enough for Remus to sit down cross-legged at the other end of the couch, then dropped his head and shoulders into Remus' lap, narrowly missing braining himself on Remus' mug.

"Oaf. Now my trousers are wet."

Sirius smiled charmingly. "Tell me how your day was."

Remus sighed and, as usual, gave an evasive answer. "Pretty bad. Yours?"

"Okay," Sirius said. "Old Mad-Eye was having kittens about something some new recruit did, so the rest of us tried to stay out of his way." As he talked, he reached up above his face and fiddled idly with the buttons on his friend's shirt. "And Lily had it pretty bad this morning, which meant Prongs was stressing out all day." Remus peered down into Sirius' face around his teacup, looking so sympathetic that Sirius added plaintively, "….and then it rained."

"Drink your tea," Remus said, snapped out of compassionate mode by this, just as Sirius had intended. "And don't you dare try to do it lying on my lap."

Sirius sat up. "I don't want your bloody tea," he said instead, staring at Remus. "I'm cold and I'm wet and I'm tired and one of my best mates is at home with his pregnant wife and the other is offering me bloody _tea_."

"There's hot cocoa, too, if you'd rather that," Remus said warily.

Sirius grabbed the mug from his friend's unresisting hand, placed it firmly down on the table—a little too firmly, for it tipped and spilled; but then, Remus was used to him leaving messes everywhere—and got up to stand over Remus as menacingly as he could.

"Won't you please tell me more about your day?" he asked, and he was surprised to find how wheedling his voice sounded, when he intended it to be not so much a question as a playful order.

Remus simply stared at him, and Sirius, giving up on that line of questioning, as always, leant forward to wrap his lover in a kiss.

* * *

He was lonely. Lonely, lonely, lonely. Forget going insane from the Dementors, he was most likely to die of loneliness. It gnawed at him night and day; he searched for shadowy faces in the dark and dusty corners of his cell, he hallucinated and thought that he found them. It consumed him so entirely that sometimes, now, when the Dementors approached, the scene that replayed in his head was not the usual one, Peter, Wormtail, thirteen dead, Godric's Hollow, James, Lily, Harry, dead, because his mind would not allow him even that familiarity of suffering, but every painful memory, no matter how miniscule, at one point was dredged from the utter crevices of his mind and fed to him.

There was a lot of empty time in Azkaban. Plenty of time for him to linger on every wound, no matter how shallow or faded.

Every pain of his youth—and there were a lot—all the embarrassment and shame. All the relationships he had and lost. All the embarrassment and shame.

_He stands a better chance there, I suppose, because at least Gryffindor girls are filthy sluts._

_Sirius, I—you—never mind this, Sirius, all of it. If that's what you want, never mind. I suppose I was right all along._

_I can't do this any more. I don't want to do this any more. I don't want to have to make myself laugh and smile. We're done here._

_I was drunk, mate. That was it. I thought you were too._

_Tell you more? I can't do that, Sirius, because I don't understand it all myself. I'm sorry._

All the embarrassment and shame, but most of all, the loneliness.

* * *

he was free, free, free free free free free and there was water and cold and cold and then there was dry land and sleep at last, but free sleep and freedom and all else drifted from his mind

* * *

To an outsider, it would seem perfectly ordinary, though some housewives or young children might be slightly squeamish. The bitch was in heat; the strange dog must not be neutered—he looked wild enough, anyway, all matted and skinny—and it was just the course that nature called for all animals. There might be puppies, and there might not; did it really matter, in the run of things? To an outsider, it would seem perfectly ordinary.

Sirius tried to restrain himself, usually, though his canine urges were quite strong. But too long in Azkaban had weakened his resolve—too long in dog form, and it had taken over; too long without company of any kind.

Besides, it was a blessing for it to be so ordinary. No human complications to entrance him, no human complications to undo him, no human complications to haunt him. And this way, at least half of him enjoyed a happiness that the other half would never find.

* * *


End file.
